Recently developed image compression and transmission standards such as JPEG2000/JPIP have enabled the interactive display of large images (i.e. gigapixels in size) over narrow bandwidth communication channels. However, these emerging standards and technologies do not provide means for achieving a more ambitious goal: to allow flexible visual interaction with a very large number of images simultaneously, each of which may also potentially be very large. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an improved system and method for an improved system and method for transmitting and/or storing image data.